A Theater of the Absurd Before Electoral Reform

BETHESDA, MD. —  Mexicans once had a unique system for picking a new president: A president ruled like a czar for six years and then personally picked his successor. The outgoing president, in fact, was the only voter who counted in Mexican elections. He was, as political cartoonist Eduardo del Rio once put it, “the Big Finger.” As soon as the Big Finger pointed at someone, the happy target was anointed as the new president of Mexico. Succession was clear-cut.

Yet, despite the monopoly enjoyed by the president, the air crackled with politicking. Influential Mexicans refused to sit back and wait for the Big Finger to point. Instead, they did all they could to push the Big Finger this way and that. Mexicans tried to persuade the president that their man was a dynamo and all his rivals ninnies or blackguards. The maneuvering metamorphosed into a comic cockpit, and I found myself right in the middle of it a quarter-century ago, when I was The Times correspondent in Mexico City.

My adventure began in early 1975, when I wrote an article about the Child Heroes of Chapultapec. According to Mexican legend, these six cadets died defending Mexico City from the onslaught of Gen. Winfield Scott and his U.S. soldiers during the U.S.-Mexican War of 1845-47. When they realized their defense was futile, one wounded cadet wrapped himself in a Mexican flag and leaped from the top of Chapultapec Hill to his death below.

In my article, I reported that the respected Mexican editor and historian Armando Ayala had completed research indicating that the cadets were neither children nor heroes; that there was no evidence of any flag-draped suicide; and that the story was probably concocted almost 50 years later by a government searching for patriotic myths.

Ayala’s revelations and my article touched a raw Mexican nerve. A retired general rushed to Ayala’s offices and challenged him to a duel. Ayala refused to fight. The attempt to punish me would come a few months later.

When I arrived at the Ministry of Interior one morning to renew my annual visa, the official in charge of journalist visas informed me that the government would not renew mine until I had “rectified” my story on the Child Heroes. I phoned Fausto Zapata, the president’s press secretary, to protest. He told me the refusal was news to him. “If anyone throws you out of the country,” he said, “it is supposed to be me, not them.”

After three weeks of frustrating inaction, Fausto called. “I think I have solved your problem,” he said. “Come to my office as soon as possible.” I rushed to Los Pinos (the Mexican White House) and found Fausto with another journalist, Bernard Diederich of Time magazine. Diederich had complained that two men in an unmarked car seemed to be following him. He thought they might be plainclothes police of the Interior Ministry.

Fausto told us to wait in a small anteroom. In a few moments, the door was flung open and Luis Echeverria, the president of Mexico, strode in, wearing a leather jacket. He grasped the two of us in mighty abrazos and declaimed, “I hear you two have had problems with the Ministry of Interior. Everything will be taken care of. You, senor, will have your visa immediately; and we will find out who these strange men are who are following you, my friend. If you two ever have another problem, just phone me on my private line.”

He embraced us again and strode out. He had neglected to give us his private number, but he did order a presidential car to take me to the Ministry of the Interior to pick up my visa.

I was almost in a kind of shock, astounded that the president of Mexico would deal with a problem in world affairs as picayune as my visa.

But once the shock wore off, it only took a few moments reflection to deduce what had happened. Fausto had obviously staged a Mexican theater of the absurd to influence the presidential succession. Pundits looked on Secretary of the Interior Mario Moya Palencia and Fausto’s boss, Secretary of the Presidency Hugo Cervantes del Rio, as the two leading candidates for selection by Echeverria. Many private businessmen and six state governors had already told Echeverria that they preferred Moya Palencia. The problems of Diederich and myself afforded Fausto an opportunity to call the Big Finger’s attention to the embarrassing clumsiness of Moya Palencia and his ministry in dealing with U.S. journalists.

Fausto, of course, never acknowledged this, but he did tell me, “We would have been the laughingstock of the world if we had kicked you out for writing an article about the Child Heroes.”

In the end, Echeverria bypassed both Moya Palencia and Cervantes del Rio and instead chose an old friend and classmate, Treasury Secretary Jose Lopez Portillo. Lopez Portillo was swiftly nominated as PRI’s presidential candidate. PRI was so dominant in those days that the opposition did not even bother to put up anyone. This troubled Lopez Portillo somewhat since he would have preferred the pretense of a democratic election. But he told foreign correspondents, “Unanimity is a possible democratic alternative.”

Admirers of the old way of selecting a Mexican president found a good deal of genius and stability in the system. Since presidents never ran for a second term, disgruntled Mexicans could look forward to some kind of change every six years. Prominent Mexicans could feel they had a chance to influence that change through lobbying. The system worked for a long time.

But even by 1975, all the pretense and gamesmanship seemed out of date. Mexico’s university-educated population was growing and so was its middle class. The nation deserved better than election by a single voter. Mexico was too mature for such foolishness. But it would take four more presidencies before Mexicans could boast of a truly contested presidential election. Now, no matter where the Big Finger points, the result will be a mystery until the ballots are counted.